For those just tuning in, this challenge is about taking a story idea from bare bones idea into a fully fledged story by writing consistently every week day for fifteen minutes. The sentence I end with on one day, is the sentence I start with on the following. Part one was Bob’s story and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story below. Part Two follows a character named Penelope. I have a few basic sentences to act as road marks on her journey. I am loosely calling that an outline. We will see where she ends up by the time the story is done. For now, we start Part two of the 2025 Fifteen Minute Writing Challenge.
Day 96: For all she knew there could be a drawer full of decorative dowsing stones just waiting for this occasion.
For all she knew there could be a drawer full of decorative dowsing stones just waiting for this occasion. Penelope thought about it for a moment and then remembered her jewelry box. She set the book down on the desk and went to her bedroom.
A few years ago she went to a fancy dress party as a fortune teller. The look required a multitude of scarves and loads of costume jewelry. She picked up most of the items from a secondhand store. Mixed in with the lot were a bunch of rings. She had at least two, sometimes three on each finger that night so that her hands would catch the light as she read the cards.
“Good think I never got rid of them.” Penelope opened her jewelry box and saw the string right away. She had a braided cord that she threaded all of the rings on to keep them together and separate from the rest of her stuff. The cheap cord and older looking rings sitting on top of everything else also discouraged Trinity from rummaging through looking for things she liked. She saw the cord and the old fashioned rings and figured there wasn’t anything in the box she wanted.
Penelope extracted the cord and thought that the mass of rings threaded onto it would be weighty enough to qualify for dowsing. It was a bit larger than she imagined such stones to be but she didn’t think that really mattered.
‘And if it does, I can take some of the rings off and try again.’
As she walked the string with it’s rings back, Penelope looked at it. For the most part the rings were glass and cheap metal. Some of the metal, in an effort to look more expensive, was plated. Some had the plating worn off. She thought there might be a few actual stones mixed in but doubted it would make much difference.
“The book claimed different stones could be useful, but it didn’t say they had to be used.”
Again Penelope thought she could easily slip any rings that became problematic off of the cord if necessary. Back in the library she spread the folded sheet out as well as she could. He wanted to accordion itself back up inside the book so she ended up having to get a paperweight from one of the shelves to place on the far edge so it would stay in place.
“Right,” She decided. The directions were simple. She was to hold the weighted string above the page and relax letting her magic spill down and send the weight swinging towards what her specialty might entail.
She held the string letting the rings dangle about six inches above the page. The page below looked a bit like a strange solar system with it’s labeled circles of differing sizes scattered about. She tried not to focus on the names in case she influenced things some how.
Penelope took a deep breath, cleared her mind and tried to imagine magic rolling won her arm like water, gathering in her fingertips and dripping down the string to the rings. She held her hand as steady as she could. She also looked ahead instead of town so that she wasn’t inclined to move the string. She felt a sharp tug, and looked down. The cord snapped and the rings fell off of it. Penelope blinked as the rings scattered across the table.
One of the rings was glowing. Penelope started to reach for it and then stopped herself as she looked at all of the other rings. One might have been glowing, but the rings did not fall randomly. They weren’t scattered across the page. Each ring was on a circle and looked deliberately placed.
Ten til Midnight 